Irish in the American Civil War » Digital Arts and Humanitieshttp://irishamericancivilwar.com
Exploring Irish involvement in the American Civil WarMon, 03 Aug 2015 00:28:00 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/http://0.gravatar.com/blavatar/ebfabc76052f2c46777cb1b56d7a8a74?s=96&d=http%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.png » Digital Arts and Humanitieshttp://irishamericancivilwar.com
The #ForgottenIrish of Co. Dublinhttp://irishamericancivilwar.com/2015/02/08/the-forgottenirish-of-co-dublin/
http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2015/02/08/the-forgottenirish-of-co-dublin/#commentsSun, 08 Feb 2015 15:19:56 +0000http://irishamericancivilwar.com/?p=7728]]>The latest #ForgottenIrish story looking at Co. Dublin is now available on Storify. Tens of thousands of Dubliners were impacted by the American Civil War, both in Ireland and America. Its consequences stayed with many until well into the twentieth century. This is the seventh county to be examined, joining Cork, Kerry, Donegal, Galway, Cavan and Sligo. Ireland has thus far chosen not to remember or commemorate the in excess of 200,000 men and their families who were caught up in this conflict. These Storify pieces offer just a handful of their stories. You can read the Dublin Storify by clicking here.Filed under: Digital Arts and Humanities, Dublin Tagged: Civil War Pensioners, Commander Stephen Rowan, Deansgrange Cemetery, Dublin American Civil War, General Charles Ducat, Glasnevin Civil War, Irish American Civil War, Manchester Martyrs]]>http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2015/02/08/the-forgottenirish-of-co-dublin/feed/0dublin1damianshielsThe #ForgottenIrish of Co. Sligohttp://irishamericancivilwar.com/2015/01/05/the-forgottenirish-of-co-sligo/
http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2015/01/05/the-forgottenirish-of-co-sligo/#commentsMon, 05 Jan 2015 18:41:18 +0000http://irishamericancivilwar.com/?p=7641]]>The latest #ForgottenIrish story looking at Co. Sligo is now available on Storify. It is the sixth county to be examined, joining Cork, Kerry, Donegal, Galway and Cavan, with Dublin to follow shortly. Storify also has a piece looking at Civil War Pensioners in Ireland. If you would like to read the Sligo Storify you can do so by clicking here.Filed under: Digital Arts and Humanities, Sligo Tagged: Civil War Pension Files, Digital Arts & Humanities, Forgotten Irish, General Michael Corcoran, Irish American Civil War, Irish Diaspora, Irish emigration, Sligo American Civil War]]>http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2015/01/05/the-forgottenirish-of-co-sligo/feed/2SligodamianshielsThe #ForgottenIrish of Co. Cavanhttp://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/09/28/the-forgottenirish-of-co-cavan/
http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/09/28/the-forgottenirish-of-co-cavan/#commentsSun, 28 Sep 2014 12:09:50 +0000http://irishamericancivilwar.com/?p=7292]]>The latest #ForgottenIrish story concentrating on Cavan is now available on Storify. It joins Cork, Kerry, Donegal and Galway on Storify, with Sligo to follow shortly. Storify also has a piece looking at Civil War Pensioners in Ireland. If you would like to read the Cavan Storify you can do so by clicking here.Filed under: Cavan, Digital Arts and Humanities Tagged: Cavan American Civil War, Cavan Emigrants, Cavan War Veterans, Digital Arts & Humanities, Forgotten Irish, Irish American Civil War, Irish Emigration History, Irish in American]]>http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/09/28/the-forgottenirish-of-co-cavan/feed/0CavandamianshielsThe #ForgottenIrish of Co. Galwayhttp://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/09/27/the-forgottenirish-of-co-galway/
http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/09/27/the-forgottenirish-of-co-galway/#commentsSat, 27 Sep 2014 10:27:30 +0000http://irishamericancivilwar.com/?p=7289]]>The latest #ForgottenIrish story is now available on Storify. It forms part of the continuing effort to raise awareness in Ireland of the c. 200,000 Irishmen who fought in the American Civil War, and their families. As with the previous Storify stories it is based on a Twitter tweetathon. So far #ForgottenIrish has covered Cork, Kerry and Donegal with Cavan and Sligo to follow in the coming days. If you would like to read the Galway Storify you can do so by clicking here.Filed under: Digital Arts and Humanities, Galway Tagged: Forgotten Irish, Galway American Civil War, Galway Military History, Irish American Civil War, Irish Diaspora, Irish Famine Emigrants, Irish Veterans, Soldiers from Galway]]>http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/09/27/the-forgottenirish-of-co-galway/feed/5GalwaydamianshielsThe #ForgottenIrish of Co. Donegalhttp://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/09/15/the-forgottenirish-of-co-donegal/
http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/09/15/the-forgottenirish-of-co-donegal/#commentsMon, 15 Sep 2014 18:33:16 +0000http://irishamericancivilwar.com/?p=7258]]>The latest #ForgottenIrish story is now available on Storify. It forms part of the continuing effort to raise awareness in Ireland of the c. 200,000 Irishmen who fought in the American Civil War, and their families. As with the previous Storify stories it is based on a Twitter tweetathon. So far #ForgottenIrish has covered Cork and Kerry, with Galway to follow in the coming days. If you would like to read the Donegal Storify you can do so by clicking here.Filed under: Digital Arts and Humanities, Donegal Tagged: American Civil War Donegal, Civil War Widow's Pensions, Donegal Civil War, Irish American Civil War, Irish at Andersonville, Irish Medal of Honor, James McKay Rorty, Vicksburg Campaign]]>http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/09/15/the-forgottenirish-of-co-donegal/feed/0DonegaldamianshielsStorify: The #ForgottenIrish of Co. Kerryhttp://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/09/04/storify-the-forgottenirish-of-kerry/
http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/09/04/storify-the-forgottenirish-of-kerry/#commentsThu, 04 Sep 2014 19:10:27 +0000http://irishamericancivilwar.com/?p=7202]]>The second Irish county to be covered as part of the #ForgottenIrish campaign on Twitter was Co. Kerry. This follows on from the first featured county, which was Cork. As promised for those of you not on the platform, I will continue to use Storify to bring together the tweets on each county in one place, and combine them with related images, videos and websites that help to fill out the experiences of some of these Irish people during the period of the Civil War. If you are interested in seeing the Kerry story you can do so by clicking here. The third #ForgottenIrish county, Donegal, was featured on Twitter last night and will be the subject of a Storify post which I will share here in the coming days.Filed under: Digital Arts and Humanities, Kerry Tagged: Bear Creek Massacre, Boston Pilot, Forgotten Irish, Irish American Civil War, Irish Medal of Honor, Kerry and the American Civil War, Kerry Soldiers, Kerry Veterans]]>http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/09/04/storify-the-forgottenirish-of-kerry/feed/1KerrydamianshielsStorify: The #ForgottenIrish of Co. Corkhttp://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/08/23/storify-the-forgottenirish-of-co-cork/
http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/08/23/storify-the-forgottenirish-of-co-cork/#commentsSat, 23 Aug 2014 11:12:18 +0000http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/08/23/storify-the-forgottenirish-of-co-cork/]]>I have been using Twitter quite frequently as part of my efforts to raise awareness in Ireland of Irish participation in the American Civil War. One recent example was the stories of 41 Civil War Pensioners in Ireland which were told using the platform over the course of a weekend. This was recently featured in Civil War Times magazine. I have since developed the #ForgottenIrish hashtag, which I am currently using to highlight the connections of different Irish counties to the Civil War. Conscious that many of my readers do not use Twitter, I am going to regularly ‘Storify’ these tweets; this also allows you to read them and also facilitates the integration of different forms of media relevant to the storyline, such as youtube lectures, images and webpages. The first of these focuses on the #ForgottenIrish of Co. Cork, which you can now view on Storify by clicking here.Filed under: Cork, Digital Arts and Humanities Tagged: Boston Pilot, Cork Veterans, Forgotten Irish, Information Wanted Advertisements, Irish American Civil War, Irish emigration, Patrick Cleburne, Walter Paye Lane]]>http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/08/23/storify-the-forgottenirish-of-co-cork/feed/2CorkdamianshielsTelling the Personal Stories of 41 Civil War Pensioners on Storifyhttp://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/04/03/telling-the-personal-stories-of-41-civil-war-pensioners-on-storify/
http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/04/03/telling-the-personal-stories-of-41-civil-war-pensioners-on-storify/#commentsThu, 03 Apr 2014 19:21:12 +0000http://irishamericancivilwar.com/?p=6500]]>For a number of months I have been researching the personal stories of US military pensioners who were living in Ireland in 1883. The vast majority of these men and women were Civil War pensioners, and it is my hope that I can publish a book in the future on their many and varied experiences.

As part of my ongoing commitment to digital engagement I decided that last weekend I would share some of these stories, originally researched and previously untold, on twitter. This took the form of a ‘tweetathon’- where a large number of tweets are focused on a single issue. Across two days I provided an introduction to the pension system and subsequently told the stories of 41 widows, dependent mothers and dependent fathers, broken up into byte-size 144 character chunks.

The reason I choose to engage in this way is because of the reach of these social media tools. My ultimate goal is to help develop a greater understanding in Ireland of the huge number of people from the island impacted by the American Civil War, and this is just one more tool to achieve that. However, I am also aware that many people do not like (or are not on) twitter, and may not have the opportunity to share in these stories. In order to rectify this I used the Storify service to create a readable and coherent ‘story’ of all the weekend’s tweets. Here each pensioner’s story can be read in sequence, with headings inserted to alert the reader to the specific individual they are reading about. In addition I have broken up the tweets with relevant videos and images that describe both the pension files and some of the locations and fates mentioned within the stories. If would like to see what this looks like, and read some of the 41 stories, you can do so by clicking this link: Storify- American Pensioners in Ireland.

I am interested to know what you think!

Filed under: Digital Arts and Humanities, Pensioners in Ireland Tagged: Dependent Fathers, Dependent Mothers, Irish American Civil War, Pensioners in Ireland, Storify Civil War, Twitter Civil War, US Military Pensions, Widow's Pension Files]]>http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2014/04/03/telling-the-personal-stories-of-41-civil-war-pensioners-on-storify/feed/7StorifydamianshielsAn Infographic of Irish Involvement in the American Civil Warhttp://irishamericancivilwar.com/2013/11/21/an-infographic-of-irish-involvement-in-the-american-civil-war/
http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2013/11/21/an-infographic-of-irish-involvement-in-the-american-civil-war/#commentsThu, 21 Nov 2013 21:40:52 +0000http://irishamericancivilwar.com/?p=6082]]>As part of the teaching process with Masters students in University College Cork’s Digital Arts and Humanities Programme I have been exploring the world of infographics and their potential to communicate information in an attractive and easy to digest manner. For those of us without substantial graphic design or software skills there are a number of sites which attempt to facilitate the creation of infographics based on pre-existing templates. One such site is Easel.ly, which formed part of a tutorial delivered by Paul O’Shea and I earlier this week. In preparation for this I decided last weekend to experiment with Easel.ly, with specific reference to communicating information regarding Irish participation in the American Civil War. I am a fan of using visuals to communicate historic information and there have been some previous posts that have explored this, such as Scarred Men: The Disfigurements of New York Irishmen, 1863and Visualising the Demographics of Death: 82 Men of the 9th Massachusetts. My easel.ly effort is somewhat basic and could do with honing, but I wanted to take a handful of the facts and figures regarding Irish involvement and put them in a format that might draw attention to the sheer scale of the war’s impact on the Irish diaspora, something that in particular needs to be better understood and examined in Ireland. Despite its crude nature I felt that as I had created it for the class, I may as well share it on the blog!

An Infographic of Irish Involvement in American Civil War

Filed under: Digital Arts and Humanities, Irish in the American Civil War Tagged: Digital Arts & Humanities, Easel.ly, Infographics, Irish American Civil War, Irish Diaspora, Irish emigration, Irish History, University College Cork]]>http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2013/11/21/an-infographic-of-irish-involvement-in-the-american-civil-war/feed/4An Infographic of Irish Involvement in American Civil WardamianshielsAn Infographic of Irish Involvement in American Civil WarEmbarking on PhD Research into the Irish and the American Civil Warhttp://irishamericancivilwar.com/2013/11/19/embarking-on-phd-research-into-the-irish-and-the-american-civil-war/
http://irishamericancivilwar.com/2013/11/19/embarking-on-phd-research-into-the-irish-and-the-american-civil-war/#commentsTue, 19 Nov 2013 20:51:11 +0000http://irishamericancivilwar.com/?p=6078]]>As many of you will know I am an archaeologist by profession, and have spent much of my working life engaged in archaeological and historical analysis of the Irish military experience. I have been fortunate to examine many different areas over the years, be it Elizabethan-era battlefields, 17th century massacre sites, 19th century military fortifications or 20th century memorialisation and remembrance. It has been pretty clear for the past four years or so that the Irish experience of the American Civil War has utterly captivated me. I feel a need bordering on obligation (maybe obsession?) to explore, understand and disseminate the experiences of these Irish emigrants in as many ways possible.

To that end I have recently embarked on a part-time PhD at nearby University College Cork. Carrying out detailed research while still working is a challenge, but I felt the time was right to formalise and focus my study of the Irish in this period. If all goes to plan it will take me some six years to complete (of course, completion is by no means guaranteed). As someone who spends much of their time dealing in online history, it seems appropriate to undertake the degree as part of a structured Digital Arts & Humanities programme, which has a stated aim of enabling students to ‘carry out research in the arts and humanities at the highest level using new media and computer technologies’. I am based in Ireland, thousands of miles from many of the major relevant historical repositories, so it is true to say that without computer technologies I would never have been able to explore the American Civil War in anything like the detail that the digital age has made possible. Therefore it seems appropriate that part of my work is focused on the further use and application of these tools when it comes to the Irish experience of the Civil War.

So what exactly am I going to be looking at? Even a cursory glance through the history of the posts on this site will see how it has become centred on the social impact and consequences of the war, told through ‘personal stories.’ It is still early days in the formulation of my research questions and thesis outline (so expect some changes!) but I want to work on assessing the real cost of the war for individual Irish people. When a few dozen men were killed or maimed at a particular battle, what were the consequences of that event in the years that followed? What was the psychological impact on men and their families? What type of pensions and supports did they receive, were they adequate? How did they remember their experience in later years? My most probable focus will be on the men of the New York regiments of the Irish Brigade and their families (63rd, 69th, 88th New York) but this may narrow and expand depending on developments. When I have finalised my thesis outline in the coming months I hope to launch an appeal on the site, asking you the readers if you have any primary source material relating to relevant men and their families that might contribute to this analysis. My work will also require a digital component, and aside from digital analytical and visualization tools that I hope to utilise, I am also keen to continue a process of dissemination and collaboration with others interested in this area (which to some extent this blog facilitates). Ideally I am hoping that I can create a new interactive resource that will be freely available to all and will be based on the above research. We will have to wait and see if that can become a reality.

There is much work yet to do, and it would be naive of me to think that this work will not impact on the frequency of posting on the site. However, I do intend to maintain it as an integral part of my research and I also hope to post the occasional update on progress. A daunting road lies ahead, but I do hope it proves to be a fulfilling one!